RS

FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

Martin Peretz, you ignorant slut.

This title/classical reference is an honor, in its way: RedState has traditionally reserved it for spectacularly exgregious cases of public stupidity. But this Martin Peretz complaint about what has happened to The New Republic (TNR) since he sold it certainly qualifies:

Like many readers of the New Republic, I didn’t at first recognize the most recent issue of the magazine. The stark white cover was unlike anything the New Republic ran during my 35 years as the owner. Having read the cover story, I still don’t recognize the magazine that I sold in 2012 to the Facebook zillionaire Chris Hughes.

“Original Sin,” by Sam Tanenhaus, purported to explain “Why the GOP is and will continue to be the party of white people.” The provocative theme would not have been unthinkable in the magazine’s 99-year history, but the essay’s reliance on insinuations of GOP racism (“the inimical ‘they’ were being targeted by a spurious campaign to pass voter-identification laws, a throwback to Jim Crow”) and gross oversimplifications hardly reflected the intellectual traditions of a journal of ideas. What made the “Original Sin” issue unrecognizable to this former owner is that it established as fact what had only been suggested by the magazine in the early days of its new administration: The New Republic has abandoned its liberal but heterodox tradition and embraced a leftist outlook as predictable as that of Mother Jones or the Nation.

So, let me get this straight. Martin Peretz sells his magazine to Chris Hughes, who prior to the sale was talking up how he had no intention of being a doctrinaire liberal editor of TNR. After the sale, Hughes then turns right around and makes TNR into an open propaganda organ for the Obama administration. No doubt stung by the sudden frost on the DC cocktail circuit*, Peretz is now openly fuming about what Hughes did to his magazine.(pause)

For the love of God: why, Sparky? There’s no way that Peretz didn’t know that Hughes was a high priest of the Obama personality cult; and I certainly refuse to believe that Peretz didn’t get that the only reason why Hughes even wanted TNR was because of the masthead and trademark. TNR’s intellectual history and traditions? Utterly irrelevant, if not actively inimical to the needs of the aforementioned Cult of Obama. The new owner has different goals in mind; and Martin Perertz really should have realized that from day one. In short: being surprised about a rabid pro-Obama partisan taking his new magazine in a rabidly pro-Obama direction is like getting surprised when Disney buys out your magazine, then puts Mickey Mouse up on the masthead. This is something that happens.

Oh, well, TNR was pretty much unsalvageable anyway after they put that lunatic Peter Beinart in charge for a while.

*We sometimes forget that the mores of the DC cocktail circuit also dictates limits in Democratic behavior. Peretz undoubtedly has had to answer one too many sharp questions about why his magazine (and never mind that he sold it) is now acting like it was some grubby little progressive hate-blog.